In recent years, there is provided an electric vehicle equipped with a battery (or a secondary battery) and an electric motor. The battery needs to be charged in this kind of electric vehicle, for the reason of which various kinds of charging devices have been proposed in the art (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 8-33121).
The charging device disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 8-33121 includes: an operation box connected to a service wire of a commercial single-phase power source of 200 V in voltage through a time-based meter, a cabinet panel and a power supply cable; a charging cable connected to the power supply cable through the operation box; an AC/DC converter provided on a charging line that interconnects a battery mounted to an electric vehicle and a vehicle-side connector (or an inlet) attached to a vehicle body; a charging connector connected to the tip end of the charging cable and connectable to the vehicle-side connector; and a charging cable container for storing the charging cable therein.
Since the charging device disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 8-33121 is installed in a garage, it is costly to install the same in place. Furthermore, this charging device is unable to meet the demand of a user who wishes to charge an electric vehicle at an out-of-garage location. Taking this into account, there has been proposed an electric vehicle charging cord set 100 as illustrated in FIG. 9, which cord set allows a user to charge an electric vehicle with ease.
The electric vehicle charging cord set 100 illustrated in FIG. 9 includes a first cord 110 having a plug, 111 connectable to an outlet P provided on the wall surface (or the external wall surface) of a building (e.g., a house), a second cord 120 having a connector 121 connectable to an inlet provided in a motor vehicle C, and a circuit breaker 130 for interconnecting the first cord 110, and the second cord 120 in such a manner as to break the electric path between the first cord 110 and the second cord 120 at the occurrence of electric leakage.
UL (Underwriters Laboratories Inc.) Standards require that the length of the first cord 110 extending between the outlet P and the circuit breaker 130 in the electric vehicle charging cord set 100 should be 10 cm to 30 cm. For that reason, a relatively long cord is used as the second cord 120 so that the outlet P and the motor vehicle C can be interconnected even if they are distant.
Therefore, it is often the case that, when the electric vehicle charging cord set 100 is use, the redundant extension of the second cord 120 lies on the ground surface. This is problematic in safety because a man may be tripped over the redundant extension of the second cord 120. Another problem is that the redundant extension of the second cord 120 lying on the ground surface is bad in outward appearance. Additionally, there is a problem in that it becomes difficult to transport and use the cord set if the second cord 120 is relatively long.